Richard T. Walker

The mounted print is taken from a ‘cut out’ of an illustration in the book “Scrambles Amongst the Alps” by Edward Whymper. Published in 1871, the book is an idiosyncratic account of explorations in the mountains. The edition relates to the series of works “the fallibility of intent.” This work builds a connection between the insatiable need for explorers to reach a summit, an acutely defined single place of virgin territory that hasn’t yet been shaped by the ideas and trace of man, and the allure of mountain peaks as a fantasy space where knowledge can be reversed, enabling us to let go of knowing and forget. This would be a place without preconception and without expectation; a place where an erasure of past and future nullifies the power of cultural interpretation and experiences stop preventing us from experiencing.